The WordPress VIP workshop was on last week in Napa Valley (San Francisco). Glenn and I were lucky enough to attend this big event of 3 full on days that revolve around Software development and Business topics.

​The workshop is an annual meeting that connects companies as well as international web agencies who have been doing projects within WordPress enterprise eco-system. More information here VIP Workshop.

Wordpress VIP Workshop 2017

Travel journal

Day 0 ( Monday 8th )

We left Sydney airport on Monday the 8th at 1pm and got in SFO at 9am of the same day after a 14 hours flight. Wait..what??.

Day 1 ( Monday 8th again )

We made it to the final destination and the location is absolutely stunning.
The Carneros SPA resort is exactly what you need after a 15 hours flight and 24 ‘Friends’ episodes from 1997.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Napa Valley and the workshop officially kicked off at 5 pm with a welcome drink ( of course )
and an inspiring session about art and innovation run by Lee Kitchen who defines himself ‘Innovation Catalyst’.
Dinner served at 7:30 pm while the sun was still up.

Day 2 ( Tuesday 9th )

Mr Jet Lag started to show up and none of us was able to sleep more than 4 hours.
However, a big and yammy breakfast gave us the energy necessary to be full operational.

The second day offered few interesting talks:

Phil Crumm from 10up shared his adventure building the new WAMU Radio website using
WP as headless CMS and React + Redux for front end and routing.
Very smart solution which pushed WP Customizer to its limit with a impressive page refresh time of 1.3 sec

Jason Bahl ( Digital First Media ) showcased his journey while working on rebuilding ‘The Denver Post’ ( currently on VIP ).
NewsCorp Australia WP architecture was, for Jason and his team, a fundamental starting point.

Barry Abrahamson and Mo Jangda from VIP gave us an overview to VIP-GO system followed by a ( long ) Q&A session

​As a conclusion of a great day, just before heading to the restaurant for dinner, we had the honour and privilege
of spending some quality time with Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO @ Automattic, talking about the future of Wordpress.
Very smart and humble guy and, of course, he insisted he takes a picture with me. You are welcome Matt.

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Day 3 ( Wednesday 9th )

Jet Lag took over and we lived in a limbo between real world and dreams.
This condition did not stop us from delving deep into the third and last day of the workshop.

Highlights from the third day:

Alberto Medina, Developer Advocate @ Google talked about AMP and and caching strategy for PWA.
Alberto is currently collaborating with Mo Jangda on building more support for AMP with WP sites ( WP Plugin ).

A descriptive introduction on VIP automation testing was run by Lauren Mermel who showed us how
VIP re-factored and improved their testing framework.

Last but not least, we had some time to share a drink ( or 2 ) and thoughts with our “cousins” Dion Bailey ( Head of Architecture @ NewsUK ), Andrew Flemings ( Head of Content Platform at Dow Jones ) and Arun Arunachalam ( Technology Manager @ Dow Jones ).
This is NewsCorp global representative ( happy family ) just before leaving the Resort.